Gutbrod
Gutbrod was a German car manufacturer and machinery manufacturers in Plochingen on the Neckar and Bübingen on the Saar. The firm was founded by Wilhelm Gutbrod in 1926. It originally built motorcycles, then in 1930 expanded with the construction of small trucks (then standard vehicle factory GmbH), and from 1933 to 1935, Standard Superior cars were built with rear-mounted engines, tractors were built from with the company building garden and lawn tractors from 1957. The company became part of MTD in 1996. Car manufacturing An updated version of the Gutbrod Superior introduced in 1953 benefited from developments towards fuel injection undertaken by Mercedes-Benz dating initially from 1935: this Gutbrod was the first car in the world to be offered with fuel injection, some three years before fuel injection appeared in a production engine offered by Mercedes themselves. The small Gutbrod Superior model was produced from 1950 to 1954 using the company's own, front-mounted twin-cylinder two-stroke engines initially of 593cc. In April 1953 the engine size was increased to 663 cc for more expensive 'Luxus 700' versions of the car, while the standard model continued to be offered with the original smaller engine. Claimed power output was for the base version, while for the larger engine or was claimed according to whether fuel feed came via a carburettor or a form of fuel injection. Press reports commended the speed and secure handling of the cars but indicated that the sporty handling came in return for sacrificing some comfort. It was also noted that normal conversation became impossible at speeds above about 80 km/h (50 mph) due to the noise. 7726 cars were produced before the factory was forced to close. The car was developed at the company's small factory at Plochingen am Neckar by Technical Director Dr. Hans Scherenberg during the time of Walter Gutbrod who had taken over the firm in 1948 on the death of his father, Wilhelm Gutbrod (26 February 1890 - 9 August 1948). Scherenberg arrived at Gutbrod from Mercedes where the victorious war-time allies had enforced a pause in engine fuel-injection development, and in 1952 he would return to that firm. A Gutbrod injection engine can still be seen in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. It was a small two seater car, the overall length was , width and the total weight , max speed . The car was offered as standard version for a price of DM 3990, and as Superior Luxus for DM 4380. Recently, a restoration project of an injection model was sold in Geneva for CHF 3000. In 1956, Norwegian Troll cars were equipped with Gutbrod engines. Tractor manufacture In 1953, the insolvency led to a partial sale of the company. 1954 saw the end of automobile production at Gutbrod. From 1957 exclusively agricultural equipment in the remaining works at Bübingen were produced. In 1976 the production area of the narrow vineyard tractors and municipal and Bungartz Peschke of the company was acquired. Prior to its acquisition by Modern Tool and Die Company (MTD) in the year 1996, mainly manufacturing powered mowers and small tractors. Gutbrod today is one of the leading brands in outdoor power equipment. Tractor models The tractors were sold as the following models: *1032 *2500 *4300 D *5025 B E * ELF buitl by Gutbrod and identical to the Gutbrod Superior 1050 F (1949-1950) G K M ND (1949-1951) (1950-1951) (1950-1951) P R S *Superior 1040 T U V See also * List of German cars Sources and further reading * Tractor Lexicon on Wikibooks - http://de.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Traktorenlexikon:_Gutbrod External links * German Standard-Gutbrod-Friends Interest Community * Standard-Gutbrod Forum Category:Gutbrod Category:Tractor manufacturers of Germany Category:Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of Germany Category:MTD Products Category:Companies of Germany Category:Companies founded in 1926